Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Get me in front of those primitives. It’s time to show these Confederation wannabes what a real Fighting Force can do!”

  He was already in for a penny, so he might as well push in for the rest of the pound. Besides, it was bad for morale to let the smaller Lancer contingent always take point, as if he and his Marines were afraid of a little close-quarters combat.

  Chapter 61: Akantha in a Hot Mix

  “We’ve got escape pods homing in on the ship,” reported one of the few men left on the Armor Prince.

  Akantha glowered at the screen for a moment, “I wish I could receive that as good tidings,” she said and watched as the scant little bridge crew she had assembled scrambled to guide the pods into their cargo bay.

  “Hold Mistress,” exclaimed the woman manning the Communications Console, one of Akantha’s native warriors, “I’m receiving a report; pirates have broken the line, and are fighting our guards stationed at the entrance to the ship!”

  Akantha sat up in her chair. “How many are there,” she asked eagerly, “and will our warriors hold their position?”

  “The entrance squads are requesting reinforcements; they report a mixed company of armored and unarmored pirates, with blaster and plasma weapons,” the woman at the com-links reported in a rising voice.

  “Put me on ship-wide,” Akantha ordered, lifting her chin imperiously.

  The Lancer pressed a few buttons on her console, producing a high pitched whine so loud many on the Bridge covered their ears. A few even slammed their visor plates down before she got it under control, slapping buttons like they were enemy targets.

  The whining stopped and she pressed another series of buttons.

  “It’s ready, Mistress,” she blushed, her eyes cast down upon her console.

  Akantha gave her a sharp, penetrating look before turning to face the screen.

  “Men!” she cried, even though almost every Lancer still on the ship, outside of less than a handful on the bridge, were actually women. Having fought so hard to become warriors, she knew that these women would actually be insulted if she addressed them as anything else, “as your Castellan and Commander of this new fortress, I bring new; a force of pirates has slipped behind the main force. It is currently digging its way into the soft underbelly of Omicron Station.”

  All around her on the bridge, Lancers were picking their heads up and smiling. One singular exception, dressed in a captured suit of pirate armor and, after much fruitless posturing and protesting now sitting at the Helmsman’s spot, looked worried.

  Akantha glared at the former shuttle pilot for attempting, with his very presence, to dampen the positive energy building in the room. Then an idea inspired solely by his thunderous rain cloud of a face gripped her in its clutches and she grinned.

  “Warriors, Lancers, Men,” she called out, to the roughly company and a half of soldiers remaining to guard their fortress Battleship, “the rapid reaction force is to instantly make its way to our beleaguered squads guarding the main entrance. The rest of you are to begin gathering up the power armor of our defeated foes. We shall arm and armor the reinforcements even now trickling into our cargo holds like the first flash of rain before the storm,” she ordered, feeling inspired. This would allow her to turn a liability like all the refugees fleeing the Clover into an asset: more fighters to defend the ship! And it was all thanks to the scowling face of that insulting little man.

  Around her the members of the bridge crew seemed stunned by this new revelation.

  “We shall fight them…” she flushed realizing there weren’t actually any walls they could man on this fortress, unless one counted the outside?

  “We shall fight them in the halls,” she stumbled, starting over again, the important thing wasn’t to never trip or make a mistake, the important thing was to never stop going. That was something her Protector had done so well, and through his example she would be guided. Angrily, she rubbed the back of her hand over her cheek.

  “We shall fight them in the corridors,” she ground out, clenching her fists, “we shall even fight them on what passes for the walls of this ship, its outer hull!” she yelled with triumph rising in her voice, “to victory, to the confounding of our foes, and to a conflict which shall be a tale for the storytellers!”

  Around her she could see her impromptu little Bridge crew sit up straighter in their chairs. Even though she couldn’t see it, she could feel her sisters in arms moving with a rising sense of purpose.

  Now all they had to do was hold their ground, until the main force under Colonels Suffic and Wainwright either made contact with the Sundered People who worked as virtual slaves within this pirate station, or… she turned her mind from the thought. If these Sundered Demons proved to be faithless and ineffective, as many of her Honor Guard feared, the result would be catastrophic.

  The demons… no, she reminded herself abruptly, it was not politic to call the creatures what they actually were. They called themselves the Sundered, and now so must she, even in the privacy of her own mind. These Sundered, she thought the word firmly, fought with skill and honor, which was why she had been inspired to approach them in the first place.

  That, and she had sensed from the vast amount of information Glue had been able to provide on such short notice, as it regarded the Omicron, that there must be any number of his people within her at a given time. It only remained to be seen, if an honorable offer of a place within the ranks of her sworn citizens —with a hold-minor of their own, was enough to sway them to her side.

  She had to hope, that through Glue, she had been able to sway them — sway and hold them, she thought glumly, after the crippling losses of Jason and the Lucky Clover.

  Chapter 62: The Binding Glue

  “Why should we trust mouth yappings of this human,” asked a large Elder of the Sundered People, his arms still thick and hale with the vitality of a much younger male.

  “Her words had the feel of truth,” Glue mused, glad to once again be speaking the native tongue of his people. The lights of his cybernetics flashing as they wirelessly connected to the Core Systems of the Sundered and began uploading the entire record of his last battle and time in captivity. First a text file, then audio and after both of those were completed, if there was time or he was able to find a hard link first, there would follow the complete audio-visual record of everything he had experienced since leaving his people.

  Several key files were flagged as of heightened interest, mainly the ones involving the Leader of the Battleship that had captured him, and the others of his conversations with that one’s mate.

  The Elder rapidly skimmed the files, from the time he took, just enough to read a few highlights of the text, then popped his lips derisively.

  “You are a brave Warrior of the Sundered, with many sacrifices,” the Elder allowed, “but even the bravest who has sacrificed and yet still lives can lead his head down a crooked path in the search of hope.”

  “What hope, Elder,” Glue asked, bowing his head.

  “Belief of that which is not believable merely because of the body’s natural need to survive,” the Elder said forcefully slapping his hands on the floor with resounding force. “They capture you and because of that, you leap to believe anything they feed into your brain, anything that seems a way to keep living!”

  “In what particulars do you find deceit,” Glue asked calmly, turning his hands in toward his body to show his receptiveness to receive instruction.

  “In every particular,” grunted the elder. “What I cannot believe — not that you would listen to her words, I cannot fault you there—” the Elder allowed with a sour flick of his lips, “the fault is that you treated the words of a female, this female as if she was both powerful and truthful to offer what she claims. Then folly heaped upon further folly, was the wrong thinking that hypothetical ideas are enough to risk the People entire!”

  “You do not think a female can have such power, or having acquired it, think the deep thoughts I have
relayed,” Glue asked mildly, still maintaining his receptive posturing.

  The Elder snorted but before he could continue a low chorus of ‘blats,’ lip popping and outraged shrieks came from all around them.

  Glue kept his face impassive. The Elder was parading his own unthinking biases for all to see, but in Glue’s opinion he would be wiser to slow his tongue and more carefully consider his words before condemning a new idea out of hand. The way he strutted into the word-clearing, which Glue had just politely placed along his path, had shown sunlight on the location of his deepest thinking, and in the process offended somewhere around 80% of the Sundered population.

  Face darkening with embarrassment, the Elder stood up and raised his hands in an instinctive gesture both meant to be calming and intimidating at the same time. For a moment, the Sundered around them quieted and then an angry murmuring soon followed.

  Realizing his error, the Elder sat down with a grunt, quickly placing his arms on the insides of his legs to reduce his size and posture. He looked two parts embarrassed and one part angry at the double pit trap he had walked into.

  “It is a great risk, to support one faction of humans against another more locally powerful faction,” the Primarch admitted, raising to his feet and declaiming before the gathering. Unlike the Elder, he was careful to keep his posture neutral, non-aggressive, and as non-intimidating as possible. Or as much as a strong and powerful male in his prime, like Glue was, could do while strongly arguing a point. Body language was significantly more important among the Sundered, compared to humans.

  He chewed on his upper lip, letting everyone: male, female, high status and low status, see that he was not himself one hundred percent sure.

  “But however dangerous,” he continued, slapping his thighs, “remember the Sub-Clans here are not the entire body of the Sundered; we do not risk People entire with this proposed movement,” Sensing discontent, he sat down abruptly.

  “We do not speak about those who have abandoned themselves,” the Elder snapped, standing angrily, “the Sub-Clans who have stayed in the hypocritical arms of the Alliance Against Alien Genocide are no People of ours; they are dead to us!”

  “I did not mean,” Glue started to explain, splaying his hands toward the floor.

  “You mean you did not think,” snapped the Elder, “as you have not thought the entire time since your capture!”

  Another male stood slowly, cutting off the conversation between Primarch Glue and the Elder. He was shorter and wider than the other two males, but on the whole generally smaller as well. His arms and legs no longer bore the haleness of youth and sturdiness which came with it. Despite this, his face still bore the markings of a male with many mates.

  “Each one needs to watch his words more carefully,” the male said with great gravitas, “Gorgon Alliance cannot be the topic of this discussion.” He then glanced from side to side, sweeping the group with his old and wily eyes, “And we will not have the Alliance contested again here, dragged like a fermented banana into a barrel of green fruit, sent to poison the whole lot!”

  “I reject the Human Imperial’s name for the Alliance now, as I did when we were still Alliance Partners,” the Elder muttered rebelliously.

  Sensing his chance to mend fences and form some unity, Glue broke in before either male spoke again, “The Great Wisdom is right in his words,” he agreed, speaking smoothly yet quickly. “However, so is the Elder,” he continued, sweeping the gathered Sundered in the room with eyes meant to gauge their mood.

  Seeing more uncertainty than anything he hurried on, “Unlike many, some even within the Alliance itself, our People rejected the name given to an initial Grouping of which we were key founding members. A name bestowed by an Empire spewing hate upon its foes, upon that Cooperative-Structure of which we were once, but no longer are a part.”

  The Elder also stood up slightly turned away from Glue but his words running parallel to the Primarch’s. “Mere stellar proximity of the original Moot — gathered together to save the slug-like Prichtac — and to that Star System called Gorgon by the Humans, does not give the Imperial Senatas the right, or even the ability to rename the Triple-AG,” he growled. “In no small part because they allowed the Humans to label us, and then embraced that label to inspire fear and terror, did we leave!”

  “The alliance betrayed itself,” Glue agreed forcefully, “when it openly debated the possibility of genocide against the Humans, and then again in its official contingency planning. The Alliance was formed for, and was always supposed to stand against, genocide in all its forms; against Uplifts like ourselves, the Enhanced Humans who have shared our fate, and the Alien Races the Empire seeks to eradicate from this Galaxy.” Glue slammed his hands together emphatically as he saw the Elder nod agreeably. “Which aliens offered us the impetus we ever found to unite against this common threat in the very first place!”

  The Great Wisdom once again stood, this time with a sigh, “I find myself in the unique position of censuring both Primary Position Speakers for speaking in unity. It is a shame that you chose to unify in ignoring a dictate of the Ruling Wisdom by continuing to speak on a forbidden subject,” he snorted half-angrily before once again sitting down, “five minutes of mutual silence as the Position Speakers consider the folly of ignoring Great Wisdom,” the smaller male snapped from his place in the circle.

  Several elderly females with patchy fur hooted severely at Glue and the Elder, most likely the wives of the Great Wisdom as the majority of the younger females ignored them, except for a few flicks of the ear in the direction of the senior females, choosing instead to stay focused on the two Speakers.

  During the next five minutes, the various males in the inner circle (those immediately surrounding the Position Speakers) used this time to review the files Glue was even now uploading. There was a certain amount of shuffling and shoulder pushing as the males generally positioned themselves behind one of the two Speakers in a show of support.

  The females in the elevated stands, designed to let them see over the head and shoulders of the towering males down near the center, rolled their eyes at this display of physical posturing on the part of the males, and deliberately stayed put. It was their tradition; jealously guarding their coveted seats in the bleachers from other female poachers.

  Throughout the station, many more Sundered were watching through video feed, unable or unwilling to come incarnate to the Clan Moot.

  A few children clinging to their mothers in the stands started making noise during the extended silence.

  Glue suppressed a smile. The males down in the circle considered themselves too important to take notice of the whining of children up in the stands, but he was certain that the very males whose younglings were the ones making the noise, were taking silent notes. Depending on the age of the little ones, no few of the children were destined to sit uncomfortably in the near future. A sire’s hand was a very large thing at that age, very large, as Glue himself had cause to remember.

  “We should not risk ourselves and our families,” the Elder said once the minutes were up, “the risk is too great.” Instead of turning a confrontational gaze upon Glue, he was now speaking to the gathering itself.

  Glue decided to follow suit, as perhaps the time for direct emotional confrontation had passed.

  “The rewards are great,” the Primarch insisted, drawing himself up to his full height.

  The Elder quickly stood as well, not wanting to be physically dominated by remaining seated but still looking at the crowd and not Glue.

  “A place to stand, ground of our own. Both in space and inside a gravity well, a well supporting a vibrant Terran compatible World,” Glue continued, ticking off points on his thick black fingers one by one. “Official recognition within a Human Political Structure, and the right,” he slammed his fist into his open palm emphatically, “to protect ourselves, or destroy those that would subdue us on our own ground, without raising the ire of our human hosts, as has happened so o
ften in the past.”

  “A prelude of these Humans, to get help now, and then when our back is turned,” the Elder Paused dramatically, before slapping his hands together with resounding force, “annihilation! We must be fools if we think this female has the will or the ability to protect us.”

  “That is the very point,” Glue retorted, stabbing his fingers at the males in the crowd, “we will be free to protect ourselves!”

  “Something we already do,” countered the Elder. “This is no benefit, only the absence of a detriment, if we trust even this small part of the proposal to be true,” snarled the Elder.

  “Homes, land, a place for our young to roam, outside of these four metallic walls,” Glue declared, slapping the floor hard enough to sting his hand, but also emphasizing the bounds of their current metallic world.

  “Safety, the freedom, and ability to take ship and leave at a moment’s notice,” the Elder rebuked, glancing at the Primarch angrily out of the corner of his eye, “this is the strategy that has kept our People together, and it is the only thing that has kept us alive!”

  “For those who choose the safety of space, and the ability to roam the stars on a moment’s notice, over the glory of: open spaces, breathing room and honest dirt between your toes,” Glue said in a measured tone, spreading his arms wide to encompass the whole room, “there is the possibility of vast untapped wealth in Trillium Deposits waiting to be mined in the star system of our human hosts,” he lowered his head fractionally, allowing this latest revelation time to sink in.

  When he was certain they had done so, he continued solemnly, “By the very sacrifice of warriors and ship crews under my leadership, we have the factories necessary to advantage ourselves of such riches.” He raised a finger to emphasize the next point, “We did so without relying on the promises of others, or the foolish expectation that they will share their production capacity equally, between their populations and ours.”